Portsmouth Anniversaries

On 6th June 2016 Brittany  Ferries celebrated the 30th  anniversary of the opening of the  Portsmouth-Caen service. A  lunch celebrating 40 years of  ferry travel from Portsmouth, and  30 years of Brittany Ferries’  Caen route was held on 8th June  aboard the Bretagne. In the last  40 years more than 90 million  passengers have travelled  through Portsmouth International  Port, taking 25.5 million vehicles  on 135,000 ferry crossings.

There’s now a modern steel and  glass terminal which is one of the  most eco-friendly buildings in the  country, and five berths to handle  the busy ferry schedule. The Port  continues to be owned and operated  by the City Council, which  ploughs profits back into local  services. £70 million pounds has  been generated for the benefit of  the people of Portsmouth since  1976. Alas the militant French  Unions again caused chaos to  travellers in May and their action  included cancellations on the  Portsmouth-Le Havre service.

Brittany Ferries hopes to order  replacement tonnage for the  1989 built Bretagne and 1992  built Normandie during 2016,  with delivery from 2020.

New Cross-Solent Tonnage

Wightlink Ferries has signed a  contract to build a new ship for  its Fishbourne to Portsmouth  route. The new ferry will be the  most environmentally friendly  ever to cross the Solent, will cost  over €30 million, and enter service  in 2018. This investment is  part of a £45million project to  improve the route, with other  work including new embarkation  ramps at both Fishbourne and  Portsmouth Gunwharf to permit  double deck loading, an extension  to the upper vehicle deck of  current flagship St. Clare and a  new terminal building at  Portsmouth.

This investment follows  the £70 million spent over  the last 15 years on new ferries  for the Yarmouth-Lymington and  Ryde Pier Head-Portsmouth  Harbour routes. The new, as yet  un-named G-Class ferry will be  slightly larger than the St. Clare  plus will use hybrid battery technology,  as well as conventional  fuel, to reduce emissions and  make the vessel quieter. The  newbuild will have two fixed  vehicle decks to accommodate  the equivalent of 178 cars and  space for more than 1,000 passengers  on board with luxurious  and comfortable seating and  cafés. The experienced Cemre  shipyard in Turkey has won the  contract to carry out the work.

Meanwhile trials of Hovertravel’s  new Southampton built  12000TD hovercraft Solent Flyer  continued during May with the  media preview scheduled for  27th June and naming in July.  The sister craft Island Flyer was  expected to begin trials from  mid-June. Red Funnel’s new  highspeed catamaran Red Jet 6  (built at East Cowes) took to the  water on 25th May for completion  and sea trials ahead of the  planned naming ceremony on  4th July.

Newbuild For Irish Ferries

Irish Ferries announced on 31st  May that it had ordered a new  RoPax from Flensburger  Schiffbau-Gesellschaft (FSG),  via parent company Irish  Continental Group (ICG).  The vessel will be 194.80m  long with a 31.6m beam plus a  cargo capacity of 2,800 lanemetres  and an additional dedicated  car deck for 300 cars.

She will  be equipped with 435 passenger  cabins, a number of restaurants,  bars and lounges on 4 decks  and offers a total capacity of  1,900 passengers and crew.  She will deliver optimal fuel consumption  while meeting current  and known future environmental  regulations. The vessel will have  the building number 771 and is  to be delivered in May 2018. The  ship is expected to replace the  26,375gt/2011 built Epsilon. On  1st June ICG took delivery of the  2001 built, 900 passenger and  182 car capacity high-speed  craft Westpac Express.

The purchase  of the craft from Bali  Westpac for $13 million was  announced in April and the vessel  was delivered onward to  Sealift, which had chartered the  vessel to the US government  organisation Military Sealift  Command.

New Ferry In Operation At Last

On Monday 23rd May 2016,  Scandlines’ new 22,319gt hybrid  ferry, the Berlin (above), carried  passengers for the first time  when she departed Rostock for  Gedser at 0600. Scandlines had  acquired all necessary certificates  for the new ferry with trials  beginning from 20th May.

The  Berlin is the first of two sisterships  and the Berlin replaced  the Prins Joachim, which transferred  to European Seaways the  following week for further operation  in Greece. The sister vessel  Copenhagen is expected to go  into service this autumn, thereby  replacing the Kronprins Frederik  in the schedule.

Scandlines has  however decided to retain the  latter and use her as a relief vessel  on both the Rostock-Gedser  and Puttgarden-Rødby routes.

DFDS News

DFDS recorded a record month  for freight on its Dover to France  routes in March, carrying more  than 110,000 vehicles for the  first time. The company reached  the milestone following the introduction  of the Cotes des Dunes  and the Cotes des Flandres on  the Dover-Calais service to provide 15 daily departures each  way on the route.

The company  also offers 12 daily departures  each way on its Dover-Dunkirk  service. To accommodate the  increasing freight volumes of  customers in DFDS’ route network,  the company entered into  an agreement on 18th May with  the Siem Group to bareboatcharter  two ro-ro freight new  buildings for a five-year period.

As part of the agreement, DFDS  holds options to purchase the  ships. The sisterships will be  built by Flensburger Schiffbau-  Gesellschaft (FSG), a yard that  has previously delivered six ro- ro freight ships to DFDS.  Delivery is expected to take  place in May and September  2017 respectively.

The freight  capacity of each ship is 4,076  lane metres, equal to around  262 trailers. Both newbuildings  are planned to be deployed in  DFDS’ route network on the  North Sea. The vessels will add  around 20% more capacity compared  to the ships they are  expected to replace. In addition  to the extra capacity, the duo live  up to the latest environmental  design requirements and as  such are more fuel efficient and  require less handling when loading  and unloading in port.

At the  beginning of June DFDS  announced the purchase of the  26,141gt/2007 built Ro-Pax ship  Athena Seaways, from Grimaldi  Holding Spa for DKK 300 million.  The ship was bareboat chartered  by DFDS in December  2013, with an option to buy.  Since then, she has been  deployed in DFDS’ Baltic route  network on either the Kiel-  Klaipeda or Karlshamn-Klaipeda  services. Built by Italy’s Nuovi  Cantieri Apuania shipbuilder, the  8,500dwt vessel is 199m long  with a beam of 26.5m and can  accommodate 600 passengers.